


By the fires of the sun

by loveinadoorway



Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Character Turned Into a Ghost, F/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-06
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-04-30 07:26:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5155310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveinadoorway/pseuds/loveinadoorway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alternate universe, where Sir Thomas hasn't "passed on", but rather is trapped in an enchanted object.<br/>Forensic psychiatrist Victoria Branson has retired from the FBI after an attack left her scarred and suffering from PTSD. A random impulse buy at a flea market will change her life forever.</p><p>I'm notoriously bad at following through with long storylines, so I am labeling this a one shot until I have managed to write some more. Making no promises. If this continues, there's likely to be smut and the rating will get changed.</p><p>Title and quote Alter Bridge, Broken Wings</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_On broken wings I'm falling   
And it won't be long    
The skin on me is burning    
__By the fires of the sun_    

   
She caught her reflection in an old, spotty mirror and had to smile. Dr. Victoria Branson, eminent forensic psychiatrist... You wouldn't have guessed it from the old, slightly worn dress, the battered straw hat that hid the bad hair day from hell and from her comfy sandals, but the Boston born doctor had been one of the best profilers in the FBI. Her boss had been distraught when she had to leave after that... thing.  

She looked at her reflection again and shuddered at the memory of the night that changed her life forever. None of the scars were visible, she always made sure of that. The dress she wore had a high neckline and long sleeves and any other type of clothing had been relegated to the basement, anyhow.

PTSD, the diagnosis was. There was no use denying that she was badly broken. Too badly to still work in her old job. Too badly to stay in touch with her friends. Obviously way too badly for Michael.

Michael. Victoria shoved the thought of her ex-fiancé ruthlessly back into a dark drawer at the back of her mind. No use dwelling on thoughts of a life she could no longer have and of a man who couldn't handle the scars on her body.

Luckily, she had inherited some money and an old house in Belfast, Maine, from a distant uncle recently. Simon, the only former colleague who still kept in touch and the only person who had offered to help her move, had hated the old thing on sight. Victoria found it oddly comforting, with its armchairs and window seats, the fire places and creaky stairs.

She continued her way over the flea market, looking for a coffee table for the living room. So far, nothing had caught her attention and as the day grew hotter, she started to lose hope of finding something suitable. The 1970ies seemed to be all the rage - too bad Vick was more looking for the 1870ies!

An old tea set caught her attention. It wasn't even pretty and most certainly not her style, but for some reason, Victoria was drawn to it. Gold, orange and brown, flowers, no, most decidedly not her style. On top of everything else, there were only three cups and saucers left, but to her surprise, Vick found herself bargaining with the seller for it.

As she carried her purchase home, she had to laugh. What on earth had made her buy this abomination? Two cups and saucers in the set would've been okay, as would have been four. But three? Seriously? Who owned a tea set for three people?

At home, she gingerly unpacked the set. To her horror, it looked like it hadn't been cleaned in at least a hundred years. There was still some crud in the pot and the sugar bowl was half filled with what probably once had been sugar. The dirty brown, hard-as-bricks lump wouldn't budge, so Vick filled the bowl with warm water and left the disgusting residue to hopefully dissolve.

~~~

What odd dreams she had had, Victoria thought as she made herself some coffee the next morning. Blood red snow and a looming, gothic mansion. A handsome, elegant man with sad eyes, ghosts and all sorts of weird things. Where on earth had that come from? Probably served her right. She shouldn't have read Radcliffe's Italian in bed.

As she waited for the machine to finish heating up, she stirred the murky water in the old sugar bowl. The sugar lump was dissolving ever so slowly. About half of it was gone. She poured out the dirty water and put some fresh, hot water in it. Patience, that's what was needed here. No use trying to force the lump to dissolve, all that would do was probably shatter the bowl entirely.

In the afternoon, Vick poured out the dirty water again. Something hard hit the bottom of the sink. Curious, she picked the object up. A man's signet ring. Beautiful work, gold, probably quite valuable. Who knew how long that had been hidden beneath the sugar!

On an impulse, Victoria put it on. It fit perfectly and felt strangely... like it belonged on her finger. She sighed and tried to pull it off, but found that she couldn't. Ah well, didn't matter anyhow, the heavy, ornate ring looked good on her. 

Elaborate swirls forming a T and an S. Fleetingly, Victoria wondered who the gentleman had been. The mysterious T.S. - a man about town, a plantation owner? A gambler, a wastrel? A libertine, maybe even? She had to laugh at the direction her thoughts were taking.    
She started to dust the living room, humming a waltz.

In the evening, she curled up on the sofa with her book. A storm was brewing outside and it seemed to affect the wiring of the house. The lights flickered a lot and Vick chuckled at how apt a backdrop that formed to Ms. Radcliffe's most excellent gothic novel. If she were given to flights of fancy, she might start imagining the house being haunted and doom and gloom to be afoot.

Suddenly, the lights went out completely.   
Victoria lit a candle and went in search of the fuse box. Weirdly, all the fuses seemed intact. It couldn't be a general problem, either, because her neighbors' houses were brightly lit. Well, she would have to call Mr. Cooper, the electrician, in the morning. 

The house had been built in 1870 for Belfast's sheriff and mayor, Alex  Hayford and God knows when the electrical wiring had been installed. The first electrician she had called had merely shook his head as he stood in her living room. He had said there was nothing he could do. Mr. Cooper was technically already retired, but at least he knew how to tweak things until they worked again.

Well, old houses had their little quirks.    
No choice but to go to bed, Vick thought and as she walked upstairs to her room and fumbled around in the candle glow, she wondered how on earth people back in the day had managed without proper light.

~~~

The house was vast and cold. So cold. Victoria was striding through the corridors in search of someone. Someone important. She just couldn't really remember who. When she turned a corner, she almost ran into a man. Tall, dark haired, handsome, clad in 19th century clothes. Bewildered expression on his face. Wrong period, she thought, puzzled, if this dream had been brought on by reading the Italian.

How could she know it was a dream and still be dreaming? Vick didn't quite know what to make of it all. The handsome stranger was looking at her intently. His eyes were blue and Vick noticed a small scar above his upper lip. 

"Who are you," he asked at long last.

"You are in MY dream, sir, so you should introduce yourself first," Victoria said with a smile.

"This is a dream? How odd. I.... don't quite understand how I.... I was gone. And now I am back. How.... very odd," the stranger said quietly.  

He turned around and started walking down the corridor, his right arm outstretched and his fingers softly skimming over the worn wallpaper, as if to reassure himself the house was real.   
He opened a door on the right and walked into the room. After only the slightest hesitation, Vick followed him.   
It appeared to be the master bedroom. The stranger was standing in the middle of the room, staring at the bed. 

“She’s not here,” he said dejectedly.

“Who’s not here?”

“My wife. For a moment there, I thought everything was alright. I thought maybe I managed to… make it all okay. But I didn’t, did I? I couldn’t.”

He turned around and looked at Vick with haunted eyes. She could see worlds of trauma in them.  She couldn’t. Not really. She wasn’t okay, not fit for work. But those eyes…

“Why don’t you sit down here with me and tell me all about it?” She said softly, sitting on the bed and patting the cover next to her. “I’m a doctor.”


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Still not making any promises, but this bit suddenly came to me. My muse is being a contrary fokker again, but he usually is....

_In my opinion seeing is to know_   
_The things we hold_   
_Are always first to go_   
_And who's to say_   
_We won't end up alone_

Every night, it was the same. Victoria fell asleep in her cozy bed in and found herself wandering through the mansion in search of Sir Thomas. Once he had accepted the concept of a woman being a psychoanalyst, he had been almost eager to share his story. He would talk, sometimes animatedly, sometimes haltingly, about the few joys and many horrors of his life and death, shying away from all things sexual, but taking full blame for the deaths his sister caused with his help.

Vick knew he had been abused as a child, Vick knew about the incest, she just found it impossible to get him to talk about any of this. He would politely slide around those questions in this infuriatingly slick, British manner and she would eventually have enough of this, leave him sitting dejectedly in some dark corner and walk away.

There was no progress, only an endless loop of guilt and misery she couldn’t seem to break. She had taken to making notes of her strange dreams during the day and after about two weeks, she found the clarity of the dreams so unbearably unnerving that she went and did some research. And that is when things got seriously weird.

Victoria closed the last browser window with a sigh. It had taken her a few hours, but she had found him. And his sister. And his wife. And Crimson Peak. The entire sordid history, including the police files and a rather rambling account by Edith Sharpe about her courtship, brief marriage and the deaths of her husband and sister-in-law.

Vick rubbed her eyes wearily. Darkness had fallen and it seemed to fill her lovely, bright house with ominous shadows and dangerous corners. She looked down at her hands. She was still wearing the ring. She knew now it had been Sir Thomas’, a family heirloom. How it had ended up in the sugar bowl was a mystery to her, but she now resolutely took it off.

She didn’t believe in the spirit world. She most definitely didn’t believe that inanimate objects had any power whatsoever. Subconsciously, she must have made a connection with something she probably had read a long time ago. Maybe the case had come up during her studies at university at some point and she had recognized the ring, somehow.

Her subconscious must have then gone off the deep end while she was sleeping, dreaming those weird dreams. Whatever the truth of the matter, there were no ghosts and that was the end of it. And without the ring on her finger, her subconscious wouldn’t play any further tricks on her, Victoria was sure.

The next five nights were uneventful. Boring even, without any dreams she could recall at all. Vick woke rested and threw herself into doing up the old house some more. The dining room got a new coat of paint, a sunny yellow hue that went well with the old furniture. She fixed a few chairs had had come unglued and Mr. Cooper had actually managed to tame the temperamental wiring enough for her to get some modern fixtures installed.

Friday evening, Victoria sat down in an armchair in the library and continued her foray into gothic classics with Lewis’ Monk. She frequently had to chuckle at the flowery prose writing and decided after chapter two that she ought to treat herself to a single malt while reading. Slowly, night fell and the street fell silent. Around midnight, the light started to flicker.

How clichéd, Vick thought, half amused and half exasperated by the old house’s wiring, which seemed to go back to the bad old ways after only three days of relative quiet. Suddenly, there was a thumping noise behind her. When Victoria turned around to see what had startled her, she saw a book on the floor in front of the shelf.

Sighing, she got up and put it back where it belonged. She made sure it was securely lodged between its two neighbors, then sat back down and picked up her novel. Thump. Another book on the floor, a different one.  
After the fourth book, Vick didn’t know what to do anymore. She had run out of patience, as well as rational explanations for the occurrences. There were no mice, no earthquakes, there was no wind and the shelf was perfectly straight, so what on earth was going on?

She straightened up and said to the universe at large: “Look, why don’t you just show yourself? If you are indeed a ghost, then I assume it must be very draining to keep tossing books on the floor. That much energy should, if we roll with the concept that you are a ghost, suffice to render you visible, too.”

She waited, half certain that nothing would happen, half hoping that something would. When the house remained still, she was almost disappointed.

“Well, then, have it your way. I am now going to bed. Don’t you dare disturb me again.”

On impulse, she grabbed the ring from the kitchen table on her way up. In her bedroom, she rummaged through her jewelry box until she found a heavy gold chain she had inherited from her grandmother. She strung the ring up and put the chain around her neck. The ring nestled between her cleavage as if it was meant to be there. Weirdly enough, it wasn’t cool to the touch, but warm.

Vick undressed slowly, still muttering under her breath. Talking to the house, that was bad business. Talking to a supposed ghost, well, that was even worse. She briefly contemplated seeing her own doc, getting a second opinion on whether all of this was just her being fanciful or whether it meant her mental issues had worsened.

A cool breeze caressed her skin. There was nothing in the mirror but herself. Yet it did feel like cold fingers gently tracing her scars, exploring the jagged ridges with hesitant moves. Vick stilled completely, silently giving permission to the ghostly fingers’ shy journey of discovery. Real or not, there was something curiously calming about the feathery touches. For the first time since it had happened, she felt at ease.


End file.
